Vaio laptop freezing after startup?

This is a discussion on Vaio laptop freezing after startup? within the Laptop Support forums, part of the Tech Support Forum category. Hi everyone, after two months of endless tinkering &amp; research I've become almost hopeless in trying to diagnose/repair my year

Hi everyone, after two months of endless tinkering & research I've become almost hopeless in trying to diagnose/repair my year and a half old sony laptop. So I come to desperately with my problem, please help me fix my 'baby'. <3 (I really hope this is the right forum)

Okay. My laptop was working perfectly fine one day in march when I was browsing one of my favorite websites, then firefox went unresponsive and the cursor turned into the annoying spinny wheel while over it. I didn't think much of it, so I minimized the page to let it catch up. After a few minutes of no success, I tried to exit out. It wouldn't let me. I tried right clicking the task bar tab, wouldn't let me click "close".

And so, last resort: ctr alt delete. that did nothing. I right clicked the task bar itself, it allowed me to click task manager, but instead of showing it to me, I got a black screen with this error:

So, that was also out.
Eventually, I couldn't click ANYTHING. I could only move my mouse (now a permanent spinny wheel) frantically about a completely "(not responding)" screen. And so, only option left was to hard boot.

I let it chill out for a few minutes before turning it back on. After starting up perfectly, and running like it should for about five or so minutes, it all happened again. And so began the cycle of torture.

My dad and I have spent the past two months trying anything we could think of to figure out the problem. At one point, we decided to reformat the hard drive, hoping to wipe out the problem completely if it were software related. This worked. I had my computer back, running as smooth as the day I got it....for five days. On the fifth day I had accidentally left it running with a video paused for an hour or so, only to come back to it frozen completely. one hard boot later, and it was back to its old habits. And here I am.

I've even consoled with my tech savvy geek squad (lul.) friend, and all it did was leave him confused and lost.
Since the reformat didn't work, that option is out.
We ran a heat test, my laptop passed beautifully.
I tried removing one ram stick at time, one of them made no difference, and the other completely blacked out my screen during a disk check.
The last option he considered was the graphics card....which I hope dearly it isnt. (being a laptop and all, with all that stuff locked away out of reach)

ALSO: I almost forgot. when booting into safe mode, it takes much longer to freeze up, sometimes it doesn't at all. But if I run a virus scan, it WILL freeze right in the middle. It all seems to depend on how much I'm asking it do while there. (Compared to normal, where I could either just sit there waving the mouse slowly across the screen, or running a full screen graphic intense game. doesnt matter.)

And so, I come to all, hoping you could possibly have any clue that could point me in the right direction. I love my laptop, I don't want to have to buy another after just 18 months with this one.

here's some info on my laptop, im not a tech genius so Im adding anything that LOOKS relevant >.> - Sony Vaio VGN - NS130E
- Windows Vista Home Premium
- Intel Pentium Dual-Core T3200 2.0 GHz CPU
- 3 GB DDR2 SDRAM
- came with a 160gb hard drive, but after it died once before we replaced with with a 500gb bought from Frys.
* If I left anything important out please let me know ~ I want to make this as easy for you as I can.

Thank you, thank you for reading my massive wall of ranting. I hope I wasn't too incoherent. Anything you could possibly suggest would be extremely helpful. I want to do all I can before handing it over to cocky overpriced repairmen. >.< I'm counting on you guys ~ <3 but no pressure ;D

I'm not quite sure what a chipset is, I'm so sorry.
But, I do know that after we bought my new HD, the recovery discs we used couldn't finish installing everything back to my computer. We decided this was due to a bad disc drive, and I went on using my computer normally from January to March that way. The only difference it seemed to noticeably make was the absence of a few programs that should have come with the package. (these included my webcam driver/software, Microsoft office among other, possibly unknown things) This happened again after we reformatted to fix my problem. But, after the problem resurfaced we DID try once more to reformat.
That time, it appeared to install everything I was missing before, to my pleasant surprise. But it only worked for one day, so I didn't mention it in my OP.
Is that possibly what you meant by drivers? Perhaps even the 3rd reinstall missed some important drivers/files that could have caused this? (long shot probably XD)

And right! I forgot to add that, haha. I believe I am running 64bit. : ) I'll find a way to check just to be completely sure though. Thank you for the links also <3 much appreciated.

Hi here is the download page for the drivers for your model I would either download them and burn to a disc or usb device and keep for the future, when installing drivers you start with the motherboard or chipset then video,audio,network\lan,then wireless,lan\wifi,then the rest http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu...mdl=VGN-NS130E all the other sony stuff is also there if you require it you can check if your missing any drivers through device manager in control panel hope this will be of use to you and please try my suggestion for trouble shooting

__________________

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.

Wow, thank you! This will definitely be useful for the future. Do you think it could be a program, despite wiping the HD? When I get home from work tonight I'll sit down and follow the steps, so I guess we'll see for sure then ~ XD

Well, I followed the instructions for a clean boot and it worked well. Upon restarting though, things did seem normal, as usual. I played around a little, trying some things out. It worked well until I tried to empty my recycling bin. This made all but my mouse and background image vanish. upon ctrl alt delete, I was met with the same error message. hard boot.

The second try, I decided to check out my event log to see if I could catch anything suspicious. Around the usual time though, it went NR to my despair. But I tried something different this time. Right after startup I opened the task manager. Since it was ONLY the event viewer that went NR, (control panel and task manager were fine) I found its process and ended it. That actually worked. : ) But, after half a minute or so control panel went NR, I tried the same approach. ended the process okay (unfortunately taking the entire windows explorer with it) but then next came task manager to NR. this left me stuck, so I had to yet again hard boot.

I'm lost, and sad. : ( But is seemed to take all my windows one by one, like a domino effect. Any insight?

Its hard to remember exactly what I had installed on this particular reboot, considering it was only working for a day.

My father insisted on installing McAfee, and I installed spybot search & destroy
I think those are the only two currently.

Right now it's actually giving me some assistance, with error messages and even opening support windows. Im currently trying to run a disc check through command prompt on my admin account, but it insists that I don't have the privileges to do so. "you must be an administrator running a console session in order to use the sgc utility"

I figured out the command prompt issue, haha. pretty simple. But was still unable to run the scan i wanted to. And now, even though the system is still running smoothly, much of what I try to do is met with "host process for windows services stopped working and was closed" I have 90 updates I need to install, but when I try to do so, this happens. I'm running a spybot scan right now, it hasnt crashed but still hasn't found anything. I'm as confused as ever.
; ( its neverending!